Altes Spital, Arnstadt, October 2015

Some impressions of the second „Identities“ exhibition. It comprised the same artists as the earlier show at „Pavillon am Milchhof“, but it showcased additional works of Alexine Chanel, Viola Kamp and myself. For further informations, please scroll down and have a look at the exhibition at Milchhof, April 2015. A documentation of Alexine Chanels new work you find here: the calling

Photographies by Alexine Chanel Thanks to Christian, Andreas, Albrecht, Konstanze, Constance, Holger and all the voluntary helpers. The exhibition was supported by: Ilm-Kreis and 

Studio Haus am Lützowplatz June, July, August 2015

Ruprecht Dreher, Peter Freitag, Nicholas Kashian, HC Petersen, Oliver Ross, Marco P Schäfer

The exhibition „Paper Icons“ convenes six artists working within the material of paper under the theme „The Icon“.
 Within the pieces in this exhibition, there are two distinct approaches : Firstly, the re-combination or subsequent eradication of iconic signifiers using found materials. Secondly, the construction of signs with an iconic appeal using blank material. Both approaches work with the deconstruction of the icon as a common signifier and the disengagement from its use as a guided association.
 A disengagement that gives the recipient a heightened awareness of the allover iconic imprint of our society of the „Iconic Turn“ by opening up new spaces of association. (Introduction see below)

Ruprecht Dreher, Peter Freitag

Oliver Ross, Marco P Schäfer

H C Petersen

Nicholas Kashian

INTRODUCTION Dark Matter, the known unknown. An encompassing, unknown structure in which the known is sporadically flashing like peripheraly-filed engrams. Dark Matter constitutes 84.5 % of the materia of the univers and it eludes our perception. The visible materia that is fundamental for our perception is formed by hypothetic forces. With the iconisation of public space by „architectural icons“ and advertisments, the meaning and form building forces of social functions and social discourse fade into the background. An orientation towards form and a turning away from shaping shows up. The outstanding is not outstanding in its function anymore, but in its form–its symbolism.The world that occurs is imprinted by marketing and capital interests. It should be mentioned that art is part of semiocapitalistic industries. Signature pieces in signature rooms are standards in art marketing. The exhibiting artists use products of semiocapitalism as basic material for their deconstructions. Magazinpages, advertisements, porn, posters, quickly consumed iconic content on ephemeral material. The artists erase, cut out, recombine and displace both formally and contentwise. Porn without sex, adds without products, polaroids without photos. Icons become patterns and patterns become icons. The signature piece steps back behind the method of making the not seen, the ephemeral and accidental visible. Structures and patterns behind the icons, the message, emerge and open spaces of perception and free association.

Thanks to Galerie Kuhn & Partner for support!

Pavillon am Milchhof, April 2016

The exhibition showcases the works of Awst & Walther, Alexine Chanel,
Jörg Hasheider, Viola Kamp and Daphna Reves. Media are (video)installation, painting and photography.
The mutual aspect of the works is their occupation with the perception of individuals and the change of individual perception in a surrounding that is determined by digital data flows – a discursive and poetic self-assertion of uniqueness in the days of
data-mining and self-optimization.

introduction

With  the still rapidly growing possibility of capturing and analysing huge amounts of data and the growing availability of data from on-line trading and on-line
communication, the providers of services and producers of goods obtain insight into the individual behaviour of consumers. These consumers are subsumed into relevant or
non-relevant groups and recieve specially created or modified offers.
Aside from commercial aspects, the surveilance of citizens by state-run agencies was
largely discussed in the context of the information revealed by Edward Snowden.

Questions occuring in this context are:

— what remains of our ideas of individual freedom and uniqueness being subjected to
those processes?
— what is the methodology behind the subsumption of individuals in groups of specified
consumers or suspects and how is it influencing our lifes?
— are the binary codes, that push these processes, the base of a standardized and
codified perception of „world“?

In this discursive context the artists present works, that:

— grasp individual aspects and keep them autonomous,
— show the complexity of everyday life inter-actions,
— confront the uniqueness of individuals with their standardization and codification.

All rights by the artists, except „Biometric Painting“ by Awst & Walter and PSM Galerie.
Photographies of the exhibition by Alexine Chanel

Thanks to Markus, Heike, Hartmut and Frank Benno!

Supported by: Kunsthochschule Weißensee, Milchhof e. V. and PSM Galerie.

real running time of „drone age voodoo“: 58 min

ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPOSSIBLE LOVE

sound/wall installation

cans, acrylic, piezos, mp3-players, amps

I think the intention of the piece is described with the title. Formally the installation is based on the complementary colors blue and orange and the interfering sounds of 2 tibetan sound bowls. The interferences unite the colors and sounds on a kind of meta-level, creating a playful vision of coming together.
The lower „couples“ sound simultaneously, the upper one echoes a bit later.

sound/wall installation
can, acrylic, piezo, amp, mp3-player The work is inspired by an incident that happened in Cartagena, Columbia, quite a long time ago. Two „police officers“ grabed me on the street and pushed me into a cell. It was pitch-black and contained absolutely nothing – not even a basket to pee in -. The intention of the „officers“ was to scare me shitless and then get some money. Besides me, there was an other, columbian, guy in this jail – obviously for a longer time -, who needed to talk. What he said is, more or less, the text of the poor creature, that is captured in the can. I saw the sunlight again the next day – they liked my fancy german pocket-knife -. The piece is dedicated to all people who are locked-up in dark cells.

play on minimum volume

Altes Spital, Arnstadt    Installation, March – September 2014 My second work for the ancient hospital „Spittel“ in Arnstadt, „15 X Bach“, is contrasting 15 professionally crafted copies of the Bach portrait painted by the Leipzig court painter Elias Gottlieb Hausmann in 1746 with 15 interpretations of the Well Tempered Piano. The interpretations are played on cd-players with headphones that are wall-mounted besides the portraits. With the installation we are deconstructing the label Bach, by splitting two main constituents of his perceptual image into aspects. One impuls to do so is given by Bach himself: On the porträt he is holding a sheet of paper showing the notation of a „Riddle Canon“. The canon consists of two given voices. The missing third voice has to be found by a partner, in this case the spectator of the portrait. Bach is inviting us to play a game with him! We follow his invitation and create an image of Bach as a potentiality. We send his portrait all the way to China and have it copied. We get the results and have fun with the divergencies. We confront the results with 15 international interpretations of the Well Tempered Piano. We connect the efforts for an objective, precise reproduction with the efforts for a subjective and personal approximation. We see and hear global exchange and endless variety. We percieve the diffrence of image and reflection, of notation and interpretation. Selection of copies made by: Amazon oil painting Co.,Ltd. Xiamen,Fujian,China Interpretations of the Well Tempered Piano, Book 1 by: Daniel Barenboim, Richard Egarr, Till Fellner, Walter Gieseking, Kenneth Gilbert, Friedrich Gulda, Angela Hewitt, Keith Jarrett, Robert Levin, Maurizio Pollini, Sviatoslav Richter, Andràs Schiff, Martin Stadtfeld, Rosalyn Tureck, Glen Wilson

IMAGES OF THE INSTALLATION

Video filmed and edited by Ronit Tayar: http://www.ronittayar.com/

Copyright of the Bach portrait: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig

The project is run by: Kuratorium zur Wahrnehmung der Interessen des St. Georg und St. Jakobs Stift e.V.

Sponsors:

  Ilm-Kreis

Partners:

Many thanks to Christian and Constanze, Andreas, Pia, Beate, Volker, Albrecht, Konstanze, Holger and all friends in Arnstadt!

WITZENHAUSEN 2013

Aboudramane, Liz Crossley, Clemence De La Tour Du Pin, Goddy Leye,
Myriam Mihindou, Antoine Renard, Rosmarie Weinlich
in cooperation with Galerie Peter Herrmann

Plants Talk, Africa was the second exhibition I was organising for the facilities of the DITSL GmbH, the german institute for tropical and subtropical agriculture, and the tropical greenhouses of the University of Kassel. Both exhibitions were working with the fascinating opportunity to connect the Ethnographical Museum and the greenhouses in the framework of exhibitions that were dealing with the relations man – plant, societies – resources.

THE GREENHOUSES

Celemence de La Tour du Pin, Antoine Renard

The common interest of the young french artist couple Clemence de La Tour du Pin and Antoine Renard, is the impact of production, consumption and marketing – and their random side-effects and interactions – on our genetic and memetic evolution.
„Premium Products for a better life“ is using the greenhouse as a screen for aggressive, highly manipulative advertisements of the food industries.
The work is operating on two levels:
Concerning the content, the six banners show combinations and work-overs of food packages, that were chosen with a special focus on fake, the difference between presentation and content. The advertising surfaces are additionally blurred, turned upside down and enriched by additional, apocryphal informations. Some of the packages are opened and squeezed out to reveal the texture and the color of the content. Just partially understandable informations emerge from irritating surfaces, whos aesthetics show, how the relation Man – Food – Nature is transformed and defined.
Formally the banners correspond to the vegetal environment – in terms of color, contentwise-. This connections stay vage and are not stringent. The predominance of the digital marketing-strategies over the Analogue, the Real is the prevailing impression.

Rosmarie Weinlich

Habitat
A melancholic memento of transience
Mixed-media-installation (lightbulbs, carnivorous plants, substratum)

Assuming that our universe is a closed system, all life will someday expire. My experiment: the biological conditions for the developement of life are given. A plant is placed in a substratum, supplied with light and then hermetically sealed. When one of my habitats is ready, time is taking over the rest of the artistic work. RW
The work was also part of the „The Beauty of Trancience“ show, May 2013. You find more pictures and , if you like your pictures moved, a video there. Please scroll down.

THE ETHNOGAPHICAL MUSEUM

 Liz Crossley

This was a City 2002. Acryl auf Leinwand  200 x 170 cm
Grass shall grow 2002. Acryl auf Leinwand  200 x 170 cm

Liz Crossley was born in Kimberley, South Africa. She lives in Berlin. Basic for her work is the landscape around Kimberley, where she grew up. A landscape, still inhabited by residual members of the indigenious population, the San, that developed in aeons and was profoundly changed in years. A landscape that was devastated by extinction and exploitation, that was shaped by the fight for survival and greed in its most elementary form. In the course of the big diamond rush in 1869, each square meter of ground was literally turned over. The face of that landscape, from the stoneage engravings of the San to its scattered presence, is object of her art.
„Landscape are the most solid appearance in which a history can declare itself. It is not background, nor is it a stage – there it is, the past in the present, constantly changing and renewing itself as the present rewrites the past“. LC

Aboudramane

Petite femme     

Puppet, Raphia, Horn, Cowries, Metall 
1997. 170 x 35 cm
Femme éphémère    Wood, Steel, Raphia, Head of a Puppet. 
1996. 129 x 30 cm.

Myriam Mihindou

WARDA    Video 1:14 min Loop

Aware of being part of at least two cultures, she is working on an universal iconography. Mainly working as a sculpurer, she is integrating all kinds of contemporary and traditional aspects. She looks upon her numerous photografies and videos as being part of an organic sculpure. Her self-referential images are dealing with the female body and its stagings. Forcefully strangulated hands and feet refer to the physical threat, these bodies are constantly exposed to. The vunerability of the self and the search for identity are the constituent parts of her work, that also includes her fight for women´s rights in africa and worldwide.

Warda Al-Jazairia (22 July 1939 – 17 May 2012) was an Algerian-Lebanese singer who was well known for her pan-Arabist songs and music. Her name literally meant Warda the Algerian, but she was commonly referred to as just Warda or as „The Algerian Rose“ in the Western media.

The Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice), formerly known as the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) is an African organization located in Cotonou, Benin. AfricaRice is an agricultural research center that was constituted in 1971 by 11 West African countries. Presently the center counts 24 African member states. AfricaRice is since 1986 one of the 15 specialized research centers – the „Future Harvest Centers“ – of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Goddy Leye

WE ARE THE WORLD      Video, 4:56 min, Loop
short demo-version

Goddy Leye was born 1965 in cameroon. He died in 2011. His main artistic endeavors were dedicated to the establishment of an african conciousness, that is not entangled in colonial or post-colonial thinking. His video „We are the world“ is an incredibly witty and intellectually precise ironic replica to the hit performed by the United Support Artists for Africa.
„The hit „We are the world“ was released, when I was still going to school, dreaming of a better world. I was angry about the fact, that african artists, who were mainly struck by it, never dealt with it. So, as the possibilty occured, I forgot that I should better not become the singer in a band and sang „We are the world“.The work was primarily shown in Douala, on a big screen facing a mall with banks and shops…..A group of young people gathered in front of it and was singing with me: We are the world.“GL

Aboudramane, Liz Crossley, Myriam Mihindou, Goddy Leye
by courtesy of Galerie Peter Herrmann
Photocredits: Galerie Peter Herrmann, Clemence de la Tour du Pints
Sponsors:
 
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